Poor customer service- Exemplified
My phone was dead on a lucky day, had to buy a new phone. I picked up a Blackberry and thought of getting the blackberry internet activated.
Now the story starts at an IDEA outlet (I carry their service).I enter a space that has a lot of commotion; did I expect it to be otherwise? I saw people with their veins on their forehead and necks jutting out. They were struggling to keep their calm. I had a similar experience in the telephone, electricity and post offices where you pay bills, but this is worse. I never like visiting the Idea outlets, that’s where the telephone and post offices score higher. Atleast in the latter cases you emerge with the job done. A few months back I had a problem in my voice mail (they took four months after I stopped pursuing, guess they must have invited somebody from Mars to handle an alien technology). Next I wanted my address changed, I submitted the papers then somehow they lost it. I stopped pursuing that as well. Officially I still live in DDA flats Delhi, three years after moving to Gurgaon, according the Idea records. I keep an old notebook ready with the address, everytime customer service asks for verification. Robots talking to robots, I simply comply. Inspite of making the human choice of turning into a robot, the fancy of getting blackberry internet was high on agenda, so I closed one eye at all the misgivings. I dared to step in. My brother (a student) too expressed his desire to switch from prepaid to postpaid service. Four days later he is still fighting with them tooth and nail after being promised an activation withing 48 hours upon all payments and signing up. I am watching him desperately trying to call them up. He is leaving town on a trip tomorrow morning. Atleast ten people in IDEA know about his trip now. Meanwhile I have given up hope on Blackberry internet. I am waiting to switch to Vodafone now (it’s a nine month old desire now, the only thing that has been stopping me is my attachment with my current number). I will start browsing for the plans now.
Here are rough demographics on Service providers around Delhi.
Corporate and High End Urban Clients: Airtel and Vodafone
Students: Airtel and IDEA and others
Rural Clients: BSNL, MTNL, Airtel and IDEA
Endnote: Idea works pretty well in the hills and so does BSNL.
Last time however I experienced poor IDEA signals in the hills.
RURAL winner: BSNL
URBAN winner: Vodafone and Airtel
It’s easy to subscribe to IDEA. Good for prepaid. However if you live in a metro and are looking at a service for long term, go for Vodafone or Airtel.
Airtel has questionable customer service as well, but by my experience is far better with them than IDEA. So far I have liked the Vodafone Customer service the best. IDEA might have great ideas at the leadership level, but the kind of degenerate people executing them at the ground level are better handled by the rural lot or if you remember that young man who had hot blood running in his veins.
‘After all who wants to buy a car that runs great the first day but when you breakdown on the highway, you eventually decide that you should have put in a little more effort to buy the other car. Don’t get stuck at an IDEA.‘
Please look forward to Poor Customer Service-II tomorrow as a live recording on how to handle indifference.
January 22nd, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Don’t take Vodafone connection. Airtel is the best, I would suggest.
January 23rd, 2010 at 2:34 am
Somehow, i have started to feel that its a well planned drive of idea, to harass their customers, which runs in parallel to the save tree campaign. The idea, of idea, is to create so much anger and hypertension,within their service users, that they start dying of nervous break downs and heart attacks, thereby killing people who are the main cause of decreasing number of trees.
HENCE TARGET ACHIEVED.